Lineage(14)

His thoughts were cut short as a sound began to invade his eardrums. It pushed itself closer and closer as it throbbed inside the car. Lance wondered crazily if it was a helicopter circling close overhead, like the ones he sometimes saw on COPS. The headlight behind them grew until it lit the back of his mother’s hair like a halo.

As the headlight approached steadily from behind, Molly’s hands shook on the steering wheel, and she thought for a moment that she might lose control and careen off the narrow highway and into one of the nearby power poles. Maybe that would be better, she thought. It would be easy to glide over to the right and strike one of the solid poles. She glanced down and saw the needle prodding eighty miles per hour. That would be fast enough.

Molly shook her head. She couldn’t do it. She may have hurt Lance in her own way by not doing something earlier, but she wouldn’t be the one responsible for robbing him of every possible experience he would have if they made it past this night. She wouldn’t take away getting his driver’s license, going to the prom, marrying a beautiful girl, having children of his own.

A rough thudding filled her ears and vibrated her hands. She glanced into the rearview mirror and saw that the headlight was only a few car lengths behind them. Any moment the old Chevy would pull even with them and her husband’s narrow face would glare at them from the driver’s seat, promising pain and much more.

The sound increased and the headlight swung out wide behind them, into the left lane. Lance leaned forward to look across his mother, terrified of what he was about to see, but helpless to resist.

A long-haired man on a huge motorcycle drew even with them, and for a moment Lance could see every detail of the bike and rider. The man wore full leather chaps and a matching jacket. His eyes were trained forward, and dark locks that must have been a full two feet long trailed gracefully behind him like a black comet’s tail.

The bike raced past them, because the biker was speeding well beyond the limit and Molly had released her pressure on the gas pedal. The biker signaled as he pulled into their lane, and then within half a mile signaled to the left and coasted off onto an unnamed dirt road, where his small taillight glowed in the night like a lone ember.

While the bike made its pass and exit from their view, Lance and his mother remained silent, relief spreading throughout their tensioned bodies. A mile past the road where the bike had disappeared, Molly began to cry. She cried in earnest now, her shoulders shaking with the exertions of her fear and exultation. Lance looked over at her, his own small face pinched with emotion. They had made it. The town was only another five miles away. In less than ten minutes they would be on an interstate heading in a direction his father would never think to look. They would watch the sun come up together, watch it rise like a strange, new god from the earth in the east. There would be happiness in the daylight, which seemed like a possibility now, the edges of it beginning to creep into feeling like a fire blooming in the deepest winter. Lance decided then that he would apologize to his mother when the sun was up and a new life was dawning upon them. He would tell her he was sorry for accusing her, for making her cry, for thinking the things that he wanted to say to her earlier. For hating her just a little bit. Lance was about to ask his mother if she knew where they would go when he saw it.

A shape began to take form on the road ahead of them, the headlights nudging the darkness away. It was oblong and dull. Recognition started to emerge like a form beneath dark waters when his mother flipped on the high beams and let out a shriek.

An old Chevy pickup sat blocking both lanes of the deserted highway, and Lance’s father leaned easily against the front fender.

Screeching rubber filled the night air as Molly pressed both feet down onto the brake until she thought she would snap it clean off. The Caravelle slid to the right but careened back to the center of the road as Molly wrenched the wheel around in a death grip. Lance’s fingers dug painfully into his own thighs, and an involuntary moan escaped his mouth.

All the while, Anthony Metzger kept his relaxed stance against the truck. His arms were crossed over his chest, and a bored expression blanketed his thin face. Only when the car stuttered to a halt a mere fifteen yards from the perpendicular truck did he move. He reached casually through the open window of the Chevy and drew out a long black object. As he walked toward the car, his shadow beginning to grow and distort behind him, Lance recognized the shotgun he held in his left hand. It normally stood behind the porch door, and with a dawning horror, Lance realized it hadn’t been there when he and his mother had left the house.